Assessing the Capacity of Masal Rural Environment for the Development of Agritourism

Agritourism is a kind of rural tourism that is located in a particular tourism or alternative tourist group. Today, agritourism is considered as a strategy to improve the economic, social and biological conditions of villages in the world. The present paper aims at assessing the capacity of Masal rural environment for the development of Agritourism based on 6 indicators: The landscape of natural attractions, the landscape of man-made attractions, tourist capacity, accommodation facilities and amenities, infrastructure facilities and services, and historical-cultural monuments in order to not only evaluate the general status of Masal villages in terms of the possibility of making and developing agricultural tourism but also identify the most susceptible areas. The statistical population consists of all rural areas of Township Masal. The Township Masal has 108 rural spots. Based on sampling in descriptive studies, 20% of the villages, 20 villages, have been identified as samples, depending on the location of the elevation -topography (Plain, foothills and mountains) indices. The Present study is a kind of applied research with a quantitative approach which has been used to analyze the data from multi-factor decision-making models (MADM) with non-predictive methods DEMATEL, ANP, and ANP-DEMATEL. The findings showed that rural areas of Masal have a good capacity for agritourism development. However, the foothill regions and the hillsides are better than the mountainous area.